Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, And The Canterbury Tales: Parallels In The Comic Genius Of Henry Fielding And Geoffrey Chaucer, Zachary A. Canter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The parallels between the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and Henry Fielding are very striking. Both authors produced some of the greatest works in English literature, yet very little scholarly investigation has been done regarding these two in relationship with one another. In this work I explore the characters of Chaucer’s Parson and Parson Adams, assessing their strengths and weaknesses through pastoral guides by Gregory the Great and George Herbert, while drawing additional conclusions from John Dryden. I examine the episodic, theatrical nature of both authors’ works, along with the inclusion of fabliau throughout. Finally, I look at the shared motif …

When In Doubt: An Exploration Of The Role Of The Oracle In The Harry Potter Series, Emily J. Milner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The popular Harry Potter series serves as the basis for my study of the oracles that appear throughout the series. By focusing specifically on Professor Sybill Trelawney, Ron Weasley, and the Sorting Hat, I show the relationships between Harry Potter and the Oracles. I also focus on a few of Trelawney's various methods of Divination and her prophecies.

Transforming The Mundane: Juxtaposing Maria Friedman’S "High Society" With George Cukor’S "The Philadelphia Story" As An Emphasis On The Importance Of Theatre, Dana T. Speight Ms.

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The subjects of film and theatre belong to an extensive hierarchical debate that has remained prominent within the realm of performing arts since the introduction of cinema in the late nineteenth century. A plethora of scholars choose to argue in favor of the former, suggesting that film surpasses theatre as superior in both aesthetics and overall execution of naturalism; however, the argument is purely subjective and cannot be applied to all films and their corresponding plays. As a counterclaim, theatre continues to thrive as a prominent source of artistic entertainment globally, not only offering a contemporary twist to preexisting texts, …

A Watchman On The Walls: Ezekiel And Reaction To Invasion In Anglo-Saxon England, Max K. Brinson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the Viking Age, the Christian Anglo-Saxons in England found warnings and solace in the biblical text of Ezekiel. In this text, the God of Israel delivers a dual warning: first, the sins of the people call upon themselves divine wrath; second, it is incumbent upon God’s messenger to warn the people of their extreme danger, or else find their blood on his hands. This thesis examines how the Anglo-Saxon applied Ezekiel’s warnings to their own cultural crisis. It begins with the early development of this philosophy by the Britons in the 500s, its adoption by the Anglo-Saxons, Irish, and …

Images Of The Other: Race, Gender, And The Imperial Relationship In Heart Of Darkness, A Passage To India, And Burmese Days, Samantha A. Mason

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores themes of race, gender, and the imperial relationship found in three anti-imperial novels and additional related works. In Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness the narrator Marlow and, by extension Conrad himself, systematically silences all African and female voices throughout the novel, effectively making Marlow, a white man, the only person capable of speaking about the horrors of imperialism. Marlow abhors the exploitation of imperialism, but admires the "civilizing" idea behind it, making him a problematic representative for anti-imperial sentiment. In E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India, the main perspective shifts to that of an …

Telling New Tales: Modernizations Of Chaucer In The Eighteenth Century, Eric Duane Larson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Any review of medieval culture and literature in the British eighteenth century requires some consideration for the modernizations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Effectively a collaboration that spanned the entire century, this project began with Dryden and Pope and continued in earnest with lesser-known poets like George Ogle and William Lipscomb. The resulting modernization of every Chaucerian tale between 1700 and 1795 revisits medieval themes, but it also displays contemporary anxieties through presentations of language, content, style, and rhetorical intent that are sometimes vastly different from Chaucer’s originals.

The modernization project is worthy of study, in particular because it reflects, across …

Dandy As Disease: Gender Hygiene And British Nineteenth-Century Literature, Sharon Louise Fox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Dandy as Disease: Gender Hygiene and British Nineteenth-century Literature” explores the link between the nineteenth-century dandy, ideas of hegemonic masculinity, and Walter Besant’s The Revolt of Man, a dystopian text in which women have usurped all traditionally-masculine roles, while men are the caretakers and manual workers. The first chapter deals with the historical role of the dandy in the nineteenth-century and how he might be viewed as the cause of the fall of Britain. The second chapter revolves around Besant’s novel, exploring how men are shown to be at fault for Britain’s fall in the eyes of the rest of …

A Band Of Sisters: Female Detectives, Authority, And Fiction From 1864 To The 1930s, Amanda Renee Schafer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Because mystery and detective fiction have been classified as “popular” genres, the complex ideas and ideologies that the authors work with and within reach a wide and varied audience through formulaic and familiar ways. The perceived conservatism of the genre allows authors to present and pursue distinctly anti-conservative views in disguise. For fictional detectives and, especially female detectives, disguise is an effective tool for solving their cases. Often, these detectives will disguise themselves as someone infinitely more conservative than they are in order to gain access to their quarry. Similarly, mystery and detective fiction wear a cloak of conservatism to …

Literature As Virtual Reality: An Exploration Of Subjectivity Formation In The Digital Era, Jessica Danielle Schnebelen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project traces a line of developing subjectivity in the history of mediation. Using Jacque Lacan’s mirror stage to emphasize the relationship between Social identification and self formation, I suggest literary virtual realities further our understanding of human-technology relationships. Examining the evolution of eighteenth and nineteenth century sympathetic consciousness reveals a subjectivity intricately bound to both cognitive and physical spaces. The emergence of the virtual body complicates this consciousness by obscuring physicality and mixing man and machine. To trace this consciousness this project looks at the work of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and a contemporary television writer, Charlie Brooker. These …

“First-Rate Eddication”: The Educational Roles Of Merlyn And Dumbledore, Carissa Johnson

Masters Theses

The Once and Future King (1957) and the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) are Bildungsroman stories of young, orphaned boys, Wart and Harry, who endure extraordinary circumstances and become wise, mature, and heroic. The transformation that they undergo is the effect of strong education from their teachers, the wizards Merlyn and Dumbledore. This thesis uses progressive educational theory to demonstrate the model these wizards employ. This study also utilizes a study of discourse grammar and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to discuss the nature of Wart’s and Harry’s education. Because of the moral education demonstrated in the stories, reading them …

Keats And America: Attitudes And Appropriations, Jessica Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While John Keats never traveled to America and only wrote a handful of admittedly hostile lines about it in his poetry, American writers and readers have consistently regarded Keats as one of the greatest and most influential poets of the past two centuries. His critical reputation in America has been stable since the 1840s, enduring throughout changing tastes and movements, and his biography and work have been utilized in manifold appropriations by American poets and writers. I examine Keats’s attitude toward the United States—which was in conflict with the general feeling regarding the country by his fellow Romantic poets—and briefly …

Robert Frost’S Ulteriority: Saying One Thing In Terms Of Another – The Inexpressible, Nicolette S. Stackhouse

Honors Theses

Robert Frost’s poetry, which is famously rich in double meaning—saying one thing but meaning something else—is also concerned with pragmatism. Pragmatism implies that there is no one fundamental universal truth. I contend that Robert Frost’s poetry says that duplicity of meaning, or ulteriority, is something to be embraced. Frost wants the uncertainty of meaning to be understood by the reader as vital to life and the mind’s processes. The simple fact that so many readers search for the hidden meanings in his poetry justly proves this point. As a pragmatist, Frost was aware that the process of getting to a …

Review Of Amy Culley, British Women’S Life Writing, 1760-1840, Elizabeth Zold

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Sarah Raff, Jane Austen's Erotic Advice, Danielle Spratt

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A book review of Sarah Raff's Jane Austen's Erotic Advice.

Review Of Dale Townshend And Angela Wright, Eds., Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism And The Gothic, Ellen Malenas Ledoux

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

“Abused, Neglected,—Unhonoured,—Unrewarded”: The Economics Of Authorial Labor In The Writings Of Mary Robinson, Jennifer L. Airey

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay examines one of the central preoccupations of Mary Robinson’s authorial career, a concern with the poor financial treatment of authors. Writers, Robinson suggests, are demeaned by predatory publishers, heartless or anti-intellectual aristocratic patrons, and a disinterested, distractible reading public, none of whom care to compensate the author for the labors of her pen. In a culture that neither recognizes nor rewards female intellect, women authors are particularly vulnerable, but Robinson’s criticisms transcend the problems caused by gender alone; male authors, too, could fall into penury when their labor was insufficiently valued. Rejecting the Romantic ethos of the solitary …

Mediated Technologies: Locating Non-Authorial Agency In Printed And Digital Texts, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

Early modern printers, publishers and booksellers not only influenced readers to purchase particular books but continue to shape our reception of printed books today. Through title-page advertisements, prefaces and indexes, these ‘print agents’ forged unique relationships with new and returning readers. Paying attention to paratextual structures can uncover strategies for marketing new books, corralling readers and outlining new genres. A consideration of framing devices can also further our understanding of digital resources: much as print agents mediated printed books, digital humanists help reinforce the value of new technologies for the study of early modern texts, guiding users to apply new …

“But I Must Also Feel It Like A Man”: Redressing Representations Of Masculinity In Macbeth, Caitlin H. Higgins

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

The most popular characters in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, second only to Macbeth himself, are the Weird Sisters. Despite being called “Sisters” the women are oddly androgynous and there is very little in their physical appearance or behavior to indicate their gender. Even more importantly, there is nothing to indicate their place in the Scottish patriarchy of which Macbeth and Banquo are firmly established. As the first actors to appear on stage and arguably the manipulators of Macbeth’s fate, the genderless Weird Sisters would have disturbed deeply rooted understandings of gender definition and hierarchy in viewers. This disturbance allows Shakespeare …

“See Ourselves As Others See Us”: Empathy Across Gender Boundaries In James Joyce’S Ulysses, Madison V. Chartier

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

Many critics originally attacked James Joyce’s Ulysses for its dark representation of gender relations. Today, many scholars consider this criticism prematurely formed and recognize that these early critics responded more to Stephen Dedalus’s antagonistic, misogynistic views in the novel’s opening chapters than to the rest of the epic and the views of the novel’s main protagonist, Leopold Bloom, who displays a much more receptive, appreciative attitude toward women. These scholars now believe that gender relations as portrayed in Ulysses actually undermine preconceived notions of a gendered hierarchy. However, this difference in character perspective is not the only or even the …

"Silence Laps Smooth Over Sound': Sound, Gender, And War, In Jacob's Room", Betsy Lawson

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

In A Room of One’s Own, as well as in Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf contends that the devaluing of women and the perpetuating of women’s inferiority facilitate all heroic and violent action (A Room of One’s Own, 36). In this paper, I’ve applied Woolf’s argument to her 1922 novel, Jacob’s Room, and focused on the ways in which certain sounds become gendered as masculine or feminine and devalued accordingly, leading to a masculine society that operates on masculine ideals. In Jacob’s Room, women’s voices are characterized as chatty and empty, where men’s voices exude authority and …